TLB 025 Master The Start by Erin Smith

Erin Smith’s book Master the Start is a great read for anyone who is thinking of or who has recently started a business. Erin offers up 10 ways that entrepreneurs ca get out of their own way and create their dream business.

Hey, Frank Gustafson here with The Leaders Bookshelf. I’m sitting here in my hotel room in Santa Clara, California. Just got finished with Experts Academy, Brendon Burchard’s Expert Academy. What an amazing four-and-a-half days I have had. It was just absolutely amazing. There wasn’t a lot of downtime, but in my downtime I did finish Erin Smith’s latest book, Master the Start: 10 Steps to Get Out of Your Own Way and Create Your Dream Business. What a great book. I really love what Erin did here in her book. I’ve started a couple of businesses myself, and I remember back one of the times when I started a business, when I left a large company that we had built and I started a brand new business, and I remember a couple of the books that I had read at the time. One of them was Good to Great, Jim Collins’ Good to Great. I read that book, and I just love the whole concept of taking something that was good and creating something great out of it.

The second book that I read that really motivated me was Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start. I tell you what, that book really laid out a lot of the things that I had … I’d been in this business, the business that I was in for sixteen years. It had been sixteen years since we had started a brand new business, so some of the things I had forgotten, some of the things I had blocked from my mind. Because always when you start a brand new business there’s going to be this certain degree of tension or consternation or just turmoil that you go through as a part of the process of starting a brand new business, so some of that stuff you just blank out of your mind. I tell you what, if I was starting a brand new business today, I would certainly read Erin’s book, because I love the way she just takes you through the whole gamut of things that entrepreneurs do to stand on the hose, to stand in their own way.

She’s got ten chapters here. Let me just read you what they are. Number one is Get Yourself Ready to Start, Prepare Yourself for Entrepreneurship, What To Do to Create a Business Around You, Understanding Business Models, Define Your Why’s … Understanding your why is so important in everything it is that you do, whether you’re going to start a new business or you’re going to create something new or just anything that you’re going to do, you have to understand why. You have to understand why you’re going to get up tomorrow morning and go to work. The why is so critical, and Erin really does a good job of laying that out here for entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs. Redefine Your Beliefs, Prepare For Self-Sabotage, Research Your Idea, Define What Will Make You Stand Out, and Putting It All Together.

Some of the things that Erin talks about, as she closed her book one of the things that she said was there’s a huge difference in mentality behind and between the statement, “I can do this,” and the statement, “I will do this.” You can start a new business. You can create something new if you want to get out there and do it. The biggest question, and there’s a huge chasm between these two questions: Can I do it? Will I do it? You can do it. The question is, will you do it? There’s a big, big difference there. One of the things I love that Erin says is really to start referring to yourself as an entrepreneur. That is so critical, to understand that you are an entrepreneur. If you decide to start a business, guess what? You’re an entrepreneur, before you’ve made your first dollar. Don’t compare yourself to the likes of a Donald Trump or the likes of a Richard Branson or a Mark Cuban or somebody that you might see on Shark Tank, one of those things. You are an entrepreneur, so start thinking like it.

One of the things that I like that Erin points out in this book is you don’t have to have all of the answers to get started, but you do have to be willing to learn. That is so great. You don’t have to have all the answers, nobody that starts a business has all the answers, but everybody that starts a business is willing to learn and has to become just willing to get out there and learn something new, bang your head against the wall. When you’re starting something new, Google is always your best friend, and there’s nothing that you can’t learn how to do on YouTube. When I had my last business, I learned how to build an eBay business by watching YouTube videos. In over two years we did $450,000 in revenue on eBay. That might not seem like a lot, but it doubled the revenue in our business, and I learned how to do that just by watching YouTube videos. Erin says, “Google is your best friend.” You don’t have to know everything, but you have to be willing to learn it.

Then the last thing that I want to talk about is how Erin ends up the book. She says, “When you’re through with this book, the time for wishing and wondering and hoping is over. It’s time to get out there and get yourself started.” Grab yourself a copy of Erin Smith’s latest book, Master the Start: 10 Steps to Getting Out of Your Own Way and Create Your Dream Business. Master the Start. You can find this book on Amazon. I’ll have a link to it in the show notes if you want to check it out. It’s a fantastic book, highly recommended. Get out there and get yourself a copy, Master the Start by Erin Smith. I’m going to put a link for a great document that you can download from Erin. It is fifty ideas to start a business with. The link is going to be bit.ly, B-I-T-dot-L-Y,/50start, 5-0-start, bit.ly/50start. I’ll put the link in the show notes, so go take a look at this great document that Erin’s got out there.

Hey, until next time, keep turning those pages.

50 Startup ideas

Over 50 ideas that you could start from today, from home... None of them involve throwing partyies!